Methods for getting hand drawn artwork into the computer

[SellersSign&Design]

I am working on a new logo for my business, but I am drawing it by hand. The last time I scanned hand drawn artwork into the computer it was a major pain. I drew it with a pencil first, then went over the final product with sharpies to darken the lines, scanned it in and went through and cleaned up every line in the drawing. This is a fairly complex drawing, so I was hoping someone would have some suggestions for a better way to get this into the computer. I was thinking about drawing it completely and then scanning and using my vector conversion program to try and convert it, but I don't know how well it will pick up on the lighter lines and colors. I know simply drawing it in Corel would be the best bet, but I am not comfortable enough with the program to do that.

 

[J Hill Designs]

if you are good with pen in hand but not pen tool on computer, scan it in, lock it, and pen-tool redraw it - you get the benefit of smooth lines without too many nodes, and you get to learn the subtleties of the pen tool etc

 

[jfiscus]

Get a wacom?
Either that or get good at vectorizing scanned artwork. (a program will never do as good of a job as you can manually)

 

[SellersSign&Design]

I actually just bought a Wacom Bamboo... I didn't think about scanning it in and locking it so I can draw over it. I will give that a shot and see what I can come up with! Thanks for the help!

 

[Billct2]

or send it the the Dr.

 

[OldPaint]

what i find works when doing freehand art work is......
1. do your drawing in a #4 drafting pencil. it is light enough that you can see what you designed but dont leave a lot of graphite on the paper.
2. ONLY go over the object you wish to be traced.......with a brand new sharpie, std tip.
3. IF there are complex objects........to go in/on the main outline, you should recopy those to another sheet of tracing paper, follow 1 & 2.....scan each as a separate object.......in corel you can always combine them if you want to.
4. DRAW OBJECTS as big as possible on an std letter size paper. this includes the other objects in the design, you can always increase/reduce the size of it once it becomes a vector. but the larger the object to be scanned the cleaner it will be, less adjusting, less clean up.
5.IF YOU DO THE WACOM.......again draw each object separate. then after its a vector, it is adjustable size wise.
6.NEVER TRY TO SCAN TEXT......drives any trace program bonkers. best to use a good high quality font.....a lot of those free fonts are really bad when you get into the "bones" of the build of the font. add text to design all from within the computer.